


Strictly Business

by goingbadly



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post Reichenbach, mormor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 01:05:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goingbadly/pseuds/goingbadly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Insertable into any Post-Reichenbach Johnlock fic where Moran is killed off screen. Angst and flashback sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strictly Business

_John looks at Moran in the back of the cab with wide, startled eyes. “He’s_ me _,” he says to Moriarty, “He’s your version of_ me. _” The keys on Moriarty’s cell phone tap uninterrupted, and Moran sulks._

 _They fight about it afterwards, on the stairs in Moriarty’s house. “This is business,” Moran tells him, “Don’t you_ dare _forget it.” But they end up in bed again anyways, Moriarty looking shaken loose and no longer mocking, his hands wrapped in Moran’s hair and his lips slightly parted when he says,_

_“Sebastian!” And it sounds like a betrayal._

          Moran is thinking not altogether incongruously about that nearly two years later on the roof of the university across from St. Barts. It’s hot under the concealing mesh where he’s lying, the grip of his rifle sweaty in his palms, and through the scope Moriarty is arguing with Sherlock Holmes. _Oh, just stay here_ , Moriarty had said, three hours ago. _John will come to rescue his precious detective, it’s no use staking out the house._ He was right, of course. There’s been word over the little two-way radio that John’s left 221b.  Unfortunately, Moriarty being right – _again –_ hasn’t stopped the past three hours from being both mind-numbingly boring and deeply uncomfortable. To amuse himself, Moran is humming tunelessly under his breath and picturing the moment where Moriarty’s eyes go unfocused and he breathes like it’s a sincere effort. He’s picturing the pink wet slick of Moriarty’s mouth, panting, begging, and imagining what he’s going to have Moriarty do to make this up to him.

          “Sir, cab should be coming into view, near New Court now…” the voice crackles over the radio on Moran’s shoulder and he smiles, shifting his sights away from the two men on the roof to find the cab carrying Watson closer.

          He’s thinking about the job now, focused, breathing gone shallow and light. No room for anything else but the cab and his finger, sticky with sweat, waiting for the word to kill Dr. Watson so they can go home.

 _“I know what you have in that pretty case of yours,” breathes the only other man in the coffee shop, late on a Tuesday afternoon. “I know what you’re going to do with it. And baby you_ can’t kill me. _” He pays for Moran’s coffee. The sun through the air glints on his teeth when he grins like a predator and there’s something instinctive in Moran that wants to bare his throat._

_He says, “Moriarty, I presume,” but it’s a stab in the dark. The name is only a whisper in the right circles. He guesses on rumours and the chill that looms over when the man in front of him smiles, and he’s rewarded with a laugh, high and sweet and just a touch insane._

_“Sebastian Moran,” Moriarty acknowledges, “I want you to work for me.”_

          Over on the roof of St. Bart’s, there’s a gunshot.

 _The first time, they don’t make it to a bed. They’re sitting on the couch, arguing, and Moran fists his hands in Moriarty’s shirt and pulls him over, forcing his lips to part with a rough thrust of his tongue like a curse. Something rips. Moriarty moans. His hands run through Moran’s hair and he_ pulls _, meaning to hurt, lips parting as an invitation._

 _Moriarty’s mouth is hot and wet and he tastes like a sin. He makes another soft, frustrated noise that slides into Moran’s mouth between their lips, and his fingers tighten in Moran’s hair. The kiss is an accusation, a fight for dominance, all teeth and flicking tongue and_ god _, Moran has never wanted_ anyone _the way he wants Moriarty now._

_He drags Moriarty into his lap._

_Possibly a mistake._

_Moriarty’s hips grind down and Moran ruts upwards into him like a horny high-school student, growling, losing control. The thing that ripped earlier was Moriarty’s shirt and it’s not hard to tear it the rest of the way free, exposing the too-skinny curve of Moriarty’s ribs. Moran makes a noise of triumph and runs his hands up Moriarty’s sides, fingers finding sensitive spots and digging in to make him whimper._

_He rips his mouth free of the kiss and leaves bruises from his teeth like a connect-the-dot puzzle up to Moriarty’s collar-bone. There he digs in and blood touches his tongue like copper and lightening._

_“Oh,_ honey _,” Moriarty says on the tail end of his gasp, breathless, giggling._

          Moran’s sights are off the doctor in an instant, and his shallow breathing goes still in shock. He should have _known_ if Sherlock had a weapon. He’d forgotten the sweat on his hands but now his whole body feels clammy, his stomach hollow. Through the scope he pans the rooftop and there’s one person standing – falling back – shocked – _Sherlock –_ Moran’s hands slip on the rifle and for a crucial instant he loses focus, can’t see what’s happening.

          Then he’s breaking cover, on his feet.

          The wind whips away his shout. Beneath him the cab he’d been tracking is pulling up and blearily he can see Sherlock walking to the edge of the roof and it’s the end of Moriarty’s plan exactly how he said it would end.

          Only there’s no Moriarty.

          Beneath him there are sirens. Screams.

          Police.

          He has to leave, _now._

          _“Se~bby!” Moriarty trills, somewhere in the house. Moran’s teeth grind together. There is very little he hates in this world more than that nickname._

_He finds Moriarty in the kitchen, tapping a pencil idly on a balancing sheet. There’s numbers scrawled in spiky rushed writing on the margins, comments and doodles. His ever-present phone is beside him on the table, and vibrates occasionally, bumping against a mug of tea._

_“Wanna go have some fun?” Moriarty asks, and smiles, trying for innocent with his eyes too wide and sliding into mad-dog instead._

_“Define fun.”_

_Someone owes Moriarty money and they find him holed up behind a construction site in a portable office. Moriarty straightens his suit and examines his fingers while the man makes excuses, as if he finds the whole thing very boring. Finally Moriarty glances up at Moran and gestures with two fingers. Moran steps forward and snaps the man’s neck._

_They visit an office building, next. Moran sniffs when Moriarty tells him to be careful of security._

_“You want_ me _to be afraid of_ rent-a-cops _?” Moriarty laughs at his distain, reflected in the glass front of the building._

_The man they’re after works on the third floor and there’s tinted mirrors in the elevator. When he thinks Moriarty can’t see Moran watches him, how the bright lights and the dark reflections play on his hair. The ding of the elevator doors opening is almost a surprise._

_Moriarty tells him to leave the second corpse where it falls, splayed backwards over a desk on the third floor like a puppet with the strings cut. Moran leans close to breathe into his ear, “I think I could get used to you watching me work,” just for the pleasure of feeling Moriarty stiffen._

          Somehow, with the sort of disconnected logic he’s familiar with from dreams, Moran gets his rifle packed back up and makes it out of the university on the far side without being questioned. He ignores the commotion, the sirens.

          He doesn’t bother calling Moriarty’s phone, just hails a cab to the house they’ve been sharing outside of London.

          He recognizes, with a calm certainty, that he doesn’t believe Moriarty is dead. There’s simply no way to reconcile it with the man he lives with. No way that _Moriarty_ could have lost, could have had things get out of control.

          _Moriarty is straddling him, pressing him back against the head board. Moran slides up into him with not nearly enough preparation, so tight and slick he gasps and loses the ability to think for a white-hot second. Moriarty rocks them together with strangled little whimpers that brush against Moran’s lips where their heads are bowed together._

_It’s not nearly enough for either of them._

_“God, fuck,_ Seb _,” Moriarty gasps out when Moran’s hands grip his hips and hold him close into harder thrusts upwards. His head tilts back, arching, and his throat is bared in a long line that’s marred with thick dark bruises. Moran pulls a callous hand away to fist it around his cock, palm running smoothly through the precum, and it makes Moriarty whimper, “_ Sebastian. _”_

_He rides Moran with all the focus and intensity that he does everything, but it’s his pink tongue flicking out to swipe a drop of blood of his split lip that takes Moran crashing over the edge into climax, crying out – “Jim!” – coming so hard he doesn’t even feel the spatter on his chest when Moriarty follows._

_Neither mentions in the morning that they’ve started waking up curled around each other, tangled together like they’re actually lovers._

          Moran doesn’t realize he’s wrong slowly, or in a rush – it isn’t a moment of climactic realization and it isn’t a conclusion he comes to slowly, convinced by the evidence. He simply wakes up one morning, brushes his teeth, looks in the mirror, and thinks, _that’s it then._

          It’s been a year since St. Bart’s, since he came home to the empty house. He’d made tea and sat at the kitchen table all night, Moriarty’s accounting still spread out – _what a fucking mess_ \- around him, refilling the cups as they cooled. He’d gone to bed at five in the morning, figuring he’d yell at Moriarty for being late when small cold feet against his wake him up too early.

          But Moriarty didn’t come home, and the papers began reporting how he’d – _not him, of course, not brilliant unpredictable terrifying Jim, Richard Brook_ – had killed himself on that roof.

          Finally, at the end of that week, Moran put together a disguise and went to the morgue. Moriarty had been removed already. No one would tell him how, or where to, and he didn’t press. He remembers how _there was no body_ had been an instant of hope.

          Of course, he saw the bloodstains on the roof.

          He didn’t bother visiting Richard Brook’s grave that year, because of course there was no body in it. Jim would never allow himself to be buried in such a normal, stupid, ordinary cemetery, beside people’s grandmas. It just wasn’t right.

          But there you had it, a year had come and gone, and Moran stands in front of his bathroom mirror with a little bit of toothpaste on his lip and thinks, _that’s it then._

          _It’s been a year and he hasn’t called and woken me up at an ungodly hour or brought me a coffee or sulked because I’ve hidden the remote or_ needed _me._

And that’s when Moran starts to believe Moriarty is dead.

          _They’re sitting on the train, going god knows where on some obscure errand of Moriarty’s. Moran’s been sleeping all day for lack of anything better to do and when he wakes up there’s a moment of swirling disorientation because it’s nearly completely dark in the cabin._

_The sun’s set and Moriarty hasn’t bothered to close the blinds or turn the lights on. The glow of his laptop is the only light in the room, and lit by it his face is contorted, chewing his lip and scowling heavily in frustration. Moran pushes himself upright and rubs his eyes with his hand, groaning, neck sore from sleeping in the chair._

_Moriarty glances up at him and smiles._

_“Do wake up. Someone’s been pissing me off and I think you’d better make him into a lampshade for me.” His eyes are red and strained._

_“If you go blind,” Moran tells him, reaching for the light switch, “I’m going to set up obstacle courses on the stairs.”_

          It’s almost a relief when Sherlock comes for him. He’s been watching the detective’s movements for the past year, since Moriarty’s former empire had started getting suspiciously smaller and there was no alternative but to admit that someone was hunting it down.

          Moran doesn’t do anything to stop him, letting the peons die or disappear into jails or suddenly renounce their criminal lives in droves. The empire was Moriarty’s, not his, and the people in it were always low and stupid and boring.

          He knows when his spotters start dying that Sherlock is close, and that’s when he moves back to London into the house outside town where Moriarty’s mess is still spread over the kitchen table. He spends his last few days cleaning his guns, going through an exercise regime designed to punish, and eating the right foods.

          He’s never been in better condition.

_The last time, they do make it to a bed. Moran leans forward to kiss Moriarty, pressing him into the pillows softly. He’s teasing, and Moriarty moans into his mouth._

_“Seb…”_

_“Shh.” He presses a finger into Moriarty, feeling the smaller man’s whole body shudder underneath him, a second following as Moriarty digs his fingers into Moran’s back and whimpers. The pressure of his fingertips feels like fire on Moran, like he’s hyper aware of the contact, the grip hot and pleading. “I can’t put into_ words _how much I want you,” he growls into Moriarty’s ear, pitching his voice low and thick as his fingers spread Moriarty open._

 _“Oh, god.” Moriarty breathes out, toneless. It’s only like this that he loses his melodrama, so desperate and open for Moran that he can’t pull himself together enough to put on a show. Moran_ loves _it._

_When he withdraws his fingers Moriarty’s hands go white knuckled in the bed sheets. Moran pushes in and seals their mouths together at the same time, fucking his tongue into Moriarty’s mouth with the same shallow thrusts as his hips. Moriarty curses against his lips, but his hands – frustratingly – don’t move, and Moran pants out –_

_“Want your hands on me, come on – “ which earns him bruises on his hips. Moriarty grips him like they’re going to fall apart if he doesn’t hold them hard together. He calls Moran’s name again, followed by a stream of curses and broken moans that run together and overlap each other in beautiful chaos._

_Moran can’t think, can hardly breathe, knows he’s growling and cursing and telling Moriarty, “God,_ Jim, _you’re fucking tight – “ but he can’t hold back enough of his mind to process anything other than hyper-real feeling of Moriarty wrapped around him._

_When Moriarty comes it’s without warning and violent, his head tossed back on the pillows, hands on Moran’s hips going loose and then falling limp to the bed as he cries out and writhes, face soft and blissful. He looks boneless, and utterly satisfied, and there’s a light in his eyes when he looks at Moran that has nothing to do with animal pleasure._

_Moran sinks his teeth into Moriarty’s shoulder to muffle his own cry. The mark it leaves will still be there on the roof of St. Bart’s._

          Sherlock stands in front of the kitchen table where Moran is sitting, and his mouth moves. He must be talking, Moran realizes. But it all seems terribly unimportant. The detective’s face is lit with triumph and fierce, proud pleasure. He’s bragging. He’s come all this way, fought so hard, faked his own death so cleverly and now he’s found the great evil Sebastian Moran and Moriarty’s empire is wiped out and -  _good for fucking him. Is he ever going to shut up?_

Moran realizes with a low dull anger that the detective is pleased because with Moran dead he’ll be able to go home to John Watson.

          _“He’s me. He’s your version of me.”_

Sherlock will tell the doctor he isn’t dead after all, he just faked it. He never really lost control. He could never lose. Make his apologies for staying away and brag about his cleverness. John Watson will be angry, and then forgive him, and he’ll have his detective again. Moran hates John Watson for that like he’s never hated anyone in his life.

          _“This is business. Don’t you_ dare _forget it.”_

He’s in the best shape of his life and he knows if he fights skinny Sherlock Holmes, with his doctor and his pride and his reason to live, he will die.

 _“_ Sebastian _– “_

   
          Moran goes down swinging.

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted to my tumblr - goingbadly.tumblr.com/tagged/mormor , if you want to sift through all my drawings to find it! I'd appreciate reblogs there if you want to share it around etc. Kiss kiss. <3


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